Grocery Manufacturers Association Dumps $5 Million into Defeating GE Labeling in Washington State

Washington, D.C. (October 1st, 2013) – Today, the Just Label It campaign called out the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), a national big food lobby group representing companies like Kraft, Pepsico and Kellogg’s, for donating another $5 million to defeat an initiative to label genetically engineered foods in Washington state. To date, GMA has donated a sum of $7.2 million, making them the largest contributor to the ‘No on 522’ campaign.

Along with fighting transparency in our food, the GMA is now under fire for fighting full transparency behind the sources of their monetary donations. A Washington non-profit group called “Moms for Labeling” filed a lawsuit against the GMA earlier this month, accusing the association of laundering donations from its members, acting as a political committee and concealing the identities of the campaign’s donors.

“It’s time these companies realize that the fight is worse than the label,” said Scott Faber, executive director of Just Label It. “Consumers deserve the right to know what they’re eating and feeding their families.”

A petition targeting many of the GMA’s members, launched in August, demands that Monsanto, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Pepsico and 60 other major food and chemical companies stop trying to keep Americans in the dark about which products contain genetically engineered ingredients. The petition has collected more than 100,000 signatures to date.

Polls show that more than 90% of American consumers want to know about the food they’re eating, a right held by citizens in 64 countries around the world that already require mandatory labeling of GE foods.